Wednesday 14 September 2016

The Inspiration of Afternoon Tea (with a bit of rebellion on the side) by Juliet Greenwood

I love afternoon tea with friends. You don’t have to dress up, you don’t have to cook (hurrah!), and you don't have to keep the rest of the family happy. It’s not even about nutrition. It’s about pleasure, pure and simple.


Afternoon tea is a simple indulgence – or so it would seem. Get women talking, and we’re poking and prodding, endlessly curious about our own lives and those of others. It might be light-hearted, but quietly, without anyone noticing, we are dissecting life, the universe and everything, and without having to be polite about it. I love that working out the stories of lives, which is what I also love in books, both the writing and the reading.

Trisha Ashley and Juliet Greenwood
It should therefore come as no surprise that tearooms, and ladies’ tearooms in particular, were once the hotbed of revolution. In Victorian and Edwardian times, quietly, without anyone noticing, over cups of tea and penny buns, in suffrage tearooms in Oxford Street and Covent Garden, and all over the country, women in the UK were planning a rebellion that would change society forever. Their talk was of breaking free of having no legal existence, no training or education that would enable them to earn an independent living and take charge of their lives. This was long before the suffragettes lost patience and took to violent direct action. The women (and men) of the suffrage movement battled for the vote for all (as most men didn’t have a vote either), and also to improve women’s everyday lives, enabling them to take their place as equal human beings, not some self-sacrificing angel with no inner life of their own.

Annie Burrows (left), Anne Bennett (right)
When the first safety bicycles (so called as the ones before had been fairly lethal) arrived during the 1880s, women loosened their corsets and took to the freedom of two wheels like ducks to water. But even the women who wore voluminous divided skirts, or wore skirts over trousers, were considered scandalous, and a threat to civilisation as we know it, often pelted with rotten fruit as they passed, and summarily thrown out of ordinary tearooms for indecency. Ladies tearooms up and down the country provided places of refuge for lady cyclists, some (shock, horror) with male companions, who didn't seem at all concerned the ladies might develop the dreaded ‘bicycle face’ and become instantly haggard (possibly because no one with any sense believed such nonsense).


Ladies tearooms were the first place women could really go on their own, without being hedged around by family and expectations to be quiet and dutiful and careful not to show any intelligence, in case it might put off any suitors. They talked to each other, and to men, without supervision, exchanging ideas and learning that they could be so much more than the role set out for them by their families and society.

Left to right: Haydn Lee, Juliet Greenwood,
Trisha Ashley, Annie Burrows, Anne Bennett
Ever since I stumbled across the suffrage ladies tearooms, when I was researching The White Camellia, I’ve loved the idea of rebellion among the teacups and the penny buns, the fruit loaf and the scones. In my story, the White Camellia suffrage ladies’ tearoom plays a vital role in the lives of my two very difference heroines, as well as continuing its fight to change the world.



There’s definitely only one place to celebrate the publication of The White Camellia – the local tearooms!




Juliet Greenwood is a UK historical novelist published in Wales by Honno Press. Her grandmother worked as a cook in a big country house, leaving Juliet with a passion for history, and in particular for the experiences of women, which are often overlooked or forgotten. Juliet trained as a photographer when working in London, before returning to live in a traditional cottage in Snowdonia, in beautiful North Wales. She loves gardening and walking, and trying out old recipes her grandmother might have used, along with exploring the upstairs and downstairs of old country houses.

Juliet's books are set in Cornwall, London and Wales in Victorian and Edwardian times, and follow the lives of independently-minded women struggling to find freedom and self-fulfilment. Her two previous historical novels for Honno have reached #4 and #5 in the UK Amazon Kindle store. Her latest novel is The White Camellia.

Website:         http://www.julietgreenwood.co.uk/
Blog:               http://julietgreenwoodauthor.wordpress.com/
Twitter:           https://twitter.com/julietgreenwood


The White Camellia

1909. Cornwall.

Her family ruined, Bea is forced to leave Tressillion House, and self-made businesswoman Sybil moves in.

Owning Tressillion is Sybil’s triumph — but now what? As the house casts its spell over her, as she starts to make friends in the village despite herself, will Sybil be able to build a new life here, or will hatred always rule her heart?

Bea finds herself in London, responsible for her mother and sister’s security. Her only hope
is to marry Jonathon, the new heir. Desperate for options, she stumbles into the White Camellia tearoom, a gathering place for the growing suffrage movement. For Bea it’s life-changing, can she pursue her ambition if it will heap further scandal on the family? Will she risk arrest or worse?

When those very dangers send Bea and her White Camellia friends back to Cornwall, the two women must finally confront each other and Tressillion’s long buried secrets.




All photos copyright: Juliet Greenwood

Friday 2 September 2016

How to Write a Guest Blog Post - by Louise Marley

If you’re a writer, sooner or later someone will ask you to contribute a guest post to their blog. If you’re a savvy writer with a book to promote, you will have identified bloggers likely to be interested in a guest post months ago, and pitched them accordingly. If you’re traditionally published, the publisher's marketing department will have hopefully arranged this for you, so all you have to do is write the thing. Simple, eh?

No? Oh all right then, here are ten tips to get you started:


Read the Blog!

Obvious, yes? Why? Because it helps you judge the style and tone of the post you're about to write. It’s no good pitching a piece about your dark erotica novel to a book blogger who only posts about sunny romantic comedies. Nor will readers of a book blog be much interested in a post about the mechanics of writing, unless they are writers themselves – it’s a bit like a magician explaining how their tricks are done. Keep the ‘how-to-write’ posts for the writers’ blogs.

Check the Requirements

Are you expected to write about a certain subject or theme? How many words do they want? As a guide, 600 to 1,000 words is the average length of a blog post. If you write something longer, remember to break it up with sub-titles or bullet points. (See: Ten and a Half Things We’ve Learned About Blogging). And, most importantly, when is the post needed by?

Stick to the Deadline

But if you have a really, really good reason for failing to keep to the deadline, ensure you give the blogger as much advance notice as possible, so they can fill the slot with something else. If you get to choose your own deadline, pick a date around the publication of your book.

Showcase Your Voice

The structure of a blog post is somewhere between an article and a letter to a friend. Whatever you’re writing about, it should sound like you speaking, not Wikipedia. You want people to read the post and think, ‘I enjoyed that. I wonder what their book is like?’

So Don’t Forget to Mention Your Book!

You are there to promote yourself as a nice, friendly author who’s written a great book, remember?

But Don’t Make It All About You

Think about what the reader can ‘take away’ from your post. Keywords here: informative, entertaining, amusing. It’s a waste of time writing a post that’s only about a book no one has had the chance to read. If your book is set in a real location, write about the location. If your character is a police detective, and you were once a police detective, write about that. The post should work out at 75% about the subject that inspired your book, to 25% actual detail about the book. Don’t waffle on about nothing. OK, it’s ‘only’ a blog post – but it should have a point! (And preferably a beginning, middle and conclusion too).

Plan Ahead

Try jotting down a list of subjects you can potentially blog about while you’re actually writing your book. For my most recent novel, Trust Me I Lie, I blogged about the true confessions of an author on social media, the enduring appeal of fairy tales, and why I love 'unlikeable' heroines – all of which are connected to the themes in my book.

Make the Blogger’s Life Easier

When you submit your post, remember to attach an up-to-date photo of yourself and a clear image of your book. Also include, either as part of the post or in a separate file, a short by-line, a longer biography (let the blogger choose which they will use), and links to your website/blog/social media accounts, including where your books can be bought. If you don’t do this, the blogger will either leave the information out or copy a bio from Amazon/a social media site that might be out-of-date. But make sure the file sizes are not so big they’ll fill the blogger’s inbox. That is not the way to make friends!

Don’t Be a ‘Difficult Author’

It’s your responsibility to ensure your post has been proofread, any stated facts are correct and it is in every way perfect. Also accept that the blogger is completely within their rights to edit the post for length, take out anything they consider might get them sued, or even reject it completely.

Promote the Post!

Don’t leave the entire promotion of the blog post to the blogger! They’ve been kind enough to host you on their blog and given their time free of charge. The least you can do is share the post across social media and visit the blog to check for, and answer, any comments.

If your post is popular, you’ll be invited back. Who knows, you might even discover you enjoy writing blog posts so much you’ll start a blog of your own …

Louise Marley writes mysteries and romantic comedies. Her most recent book is Trust Me I Lie

You can find her blog here.